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Topic: Great Lake Pizza (Read 4251 times)

I will never get to try their pizza since they closed early this year but I have always been intrigued by it. I really like their concept and appreciate the passion and dedication of the owners so I wanted to replicate their results and share it with everyone else. Their pizza was inspired by Pizzeria Bianco so you can see the similarities in aesthetics, dough structure, etc.

There is very little to almost no information about how to make their pizza or dough so I am going by my experience in making pizza and bread and take a guess based on clues that I see from the pictures and videos available to me.

Pizza - Their pizza is a medium thin pizza with a very puffy rim that has a very open crumb structure just like a sourdough country bread. The toppings are also minimal and locally sourced. Based on the pictures available, the pizza looks to be a 14" pie.

Dough - The dough is a high hydration dough (possibly a minimum of 72% water) based on the crumb structure and how the dough looks like in the picture. I am going to make a 75% hydration dough to start and work from there.

Flour - They use a flour blend possibly sourced from a local miller. I would guess that the blend would have an average protein of around 12% or less very similar to what one would use for a country bread. I will be using a blend of Central Milling flours (ABC - 11.5% protein, Type 70 - 12.5% protein and some 00 - 11.5% protein).

Yeast - I have not seen any info on what they use but I would guess that they are using fresh yeast. They would have advertised sourdough if they were using it. I will use cake yeast.

Fermentation - I would think that the dough is fermented for at least 8-12 hrs with a mix of cool and room temp environment. I will do a 12-hour dough - 4 hour bulk at 70F and 8 hour in balls at 50F then back to 70F

Oven - They use a single deck gas oven operating at 650F. I will use my home oven. I will preheat the stone using the broiler for about an hour to get the temp at around 700F. Then use the normal bake at 550F then finish using the broiler method. I would go for a 5-6 minute bake time.

Here are some pictures of their pies and the dough to give you an idea of what I am trying to go after:

Thank you Larry! I would love to help anytime. There was a little bit too much going on at the Expo and maybe too much pizza eating. But it was nice to see you guys there and hopefully we can see each other again soon.

If you can still remember, can you describe the texture of the pie you had and also the flavor? Did you notice any sourdough type of flavor in the crust? Was the bottom crispy with a soft interior or was it more on the floppy/softer side like a NY or Neo style?

Nice to see someone doing this and your pizza looks great! They will be opening another place sometime btw.

I've been to Great Lake 8-10 times and it is the best pizza I've ever had. I know they get some slack on Yelp etc but Ive always been treated great and never seen anyone treated poorly while i was there. I wrote in a review (here?) that it is the best of pizza and an awesome loaf of bread at the same time-awesome stuff. Here are a couple of my thoughts and recollections-

No 00, they use bread flour. I've been in back a couple times and remember seeing the bags but can't recall. It was a good BF though. I read somewhere that they use Heartland Mills.

I think the sauce is whole tomatoes that they crush and am pretty positive no 6in1.

I'd guess the dough either uses a poolish or an overnight room temp fermentation.

They use individual containers for each dough ball.

The dough is very wet, well fermented, and handled very minimally while shaping. Like pour/scrape out of the container and shape on the peel.

The other ingredients are absolutely pristine. From cheese to salad greens, you can tell lots of acre was put into their selections.

Jeff, thank you for all the additional details! My next attempt will definitely include some of the items your mentioned. I would think that the poolish method would really make sense for them.

Regarding the sauce, I saw in one of the videos that they had a thick and chunky sauce that is much thicker than what one would get from crushing whole tomatoes. You can see it from one of the pictures above. The consistency almost looked like what you would get from 6in1 cans with the same chunkiness but I wanted to get a much fresher taste so I decided to do the 50/50 blend.

This type of dough is quite forgiving and has a nice window of usability.

I see te pic of the sauce and I saw that episode on cooking channel. I really don't remember it being that thick or them using that much. The sauce was a touch acidic which makes me think American tomato.

I think your bake time is good. Ive noticed 5-6 and 6-8 min. He used to make only one pizza at a time then on later visits would do two and maybe three?

The crust had a mild sweet (not too sweet) but smooth with bready, nutty overtones to it.There was a definite shell that was crisp and the rest kind of melted in your mouth (you didn't have to struggle to chew it.)The toppings were all finely cut (like coleslaw} and overall the crust, sauce and toppings came togeather without one overpowering the other.(I"m not sure how the sauce was made)

I didn't get too good of a look at how he stretched it out but like Jeff said it was wet and it seemed that he had to work carefully with it.There were large and small plastic containers all over the place, some bulk, some balled (maybe he was doing some stretch and folds at the same time.one person in our party swore he was doubling over the outside edges (stretching it large and folding back the outside to a smaller diameter) I don't know.

He would open it up a bit and come back after working on another pie and open it up some more......maybe in stages

I think there are several ways to get similar results, mine is different because I stretch and dress mine on the stone counter an scoop it up with a GI peel.

Even though his pizza is great, I'm as much inspired over the fact that he is creatively breaking his own new ground.....not just regurgitating something from the past.

A few blocks south of Balmoral (the corner where GL pies were sold) on Ravenswood and Wilson or Leland is Spacca Napoli...as good as it gets, and faster by a jillion years.

GL was and remains a strock (as in crock of...) of luck. Winfrey had one or two and it was hyped from there.

Any entrepreneur who would allow customers to wait in line for two hours, then tell customers to go home because the kitchen was out of ingredients, deserves to be dragged by horses up and down Clark Street for hours.

Of course, that applies to idiots who would wait too...that place only seated 8/10.

By the way, they never, as far as I know, were open on time nor to closing time...save the first few weeks, maybe.

Needless to say, you can imagine what they think of their customers and what they put on their pies. etc.

I hope these two loonies go fargin broke and never appear on the eats horizon again, anywhere. Couple of a--hats.

« Last Edit: May 27, 2013, 09:09:56 AM by BobBill »

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A few blocks south of Balmoral (the corner where GL pies were sold) on Ravenswood and Wilson or Leland is Spacca Napoli...as good as it gets, and faster by a jillion years.

GL was and remains a strock (as in crock of...) of luck. Winfrey had one or two and it was hyped from there.

Any entrepreneur who would allow customers to wait in line for two hours, then tell customers to go home because the kitchen was out of ingredients, deserves to be dragged by horses up and down Clark Street for hours.

Of course, that applies to idiots who would wait too...that place only seated 8/10.

By the way, they never, as far as I know, were open on time nor to closing time...save the first few weeks, maybe.

Needless to say, you can imagine what they think of their customers and what they put on their pies. etc.

I hope these two loonies go fargin broke and never appear on the eats horizon again, anywhere. Couple of a--hats.

Don't want to argue, but my experiences don't match what you're describing the dozen or so times I've been. How many times did you eat at GL?

They made the best pizza I've had, opened on time, been nice etc etc. I'm aware of the reputation they have though. Their pizza compared to Spacce is tough because they are so vastly different.